I realised halfway to San Remo that I'd left my fish bag behind and now had no way to keep the fish cool... doh :oops:
I launched just before sunrise and made my way down to the squid area for some fresh bait in the unlikely event that fish turned their noses up at my prawns.
Perfect morning for it:
The standing waves near the red marker made life interesting though, luckily there's usually a small gap between the rocky headland and the waves that the yak can sneak through:
Ended up with four small squid after a couple of drifts. That part of the GPS map on the sounder is starting to look like a kid scribbled all over it from the dozens of drifts I've done from the rocks up towards the marker.
With enough squid in the bait bucket I headed around and down until I was level with the cape, and paddled out to the 30m mark. The cliffs look stunning from the water but unfortunately my phone is a piece of **** and won't cooperate when I have wet fingers so no photos; you'll have to check it out for yourselves.
There was some swell, 1-1.5m maybe but it's hard to judge when you are sitting down. Once again the Kwells weren't up to the task and there were times when I felt pretty crook but at least I kept my breakfast down this time. Definitely getting some Travelcalm for next trip.
Baits went in and the hit started almost straight away and shortly a couple of nice size flathead were in my makeshift fish bag. There were a lot around the 30cm mark which I normally let go, plus a couple around 40cm. I pulled up a couple of gurnard (bulleye I think?) too, but very gingerly unhooked those spiky ******* without taking them out of the water because the last thing I needed was a poison spine through the leg when fishing a 2-3km paddle from the nearest safe place to land. Also got my first couta. Did one short drift, then paddled back and further out from the cape and drifted from there all the way into the channel entrance. I noticed there were masses of shearwaters flying west, I'm guessing there was a huge bust up somewhere in front of the Woolamai surf beach or further along south of the island. Be interesting to see if any reports come out from that area.
Ended up bringing home 3 squid (with one used as bait), 6 flatties and the couta; I normally like to give anything new I catch a taste test but when I cut into the couta it had those worms in it so it ended up in the bait bag for next time. The flathead were a bit mushy which was a shame, probably because I wasn't able to keep them cool but I'd say it'll be hard to tell the difference once they've been deep fried.
Ended up landing around 2pm, some flog had left their dog tied up to their ute in the carpark without any water which I wasn't thrilled at.
Met up with Mike a little while later and picked up the latest addition to my collection, a 7' Shakespeare Black Stik 6-10kg overhead rod length with a Shakespeare XK-4000 reel. Looking forward to terrorizing the Tenby Point gummy shark population with than in the coming weeks.
The new rod holders I put on the yak worked great, I think I'll bring a couple more rods with me next time to I can have some fish frames out under a balloon on a game rod while bottom bashing with the snapper rods. Still a little more tweaking to be done but it is starting to turn into a very effective fishing yak (when I stay in the damn thing). I'm still looking for a good way to store the flares and the EPIRB so that they're secure enough that they won't fall out if the yak capsizes but are easy enough to access in an emergency.
Anyway, it was a fun day on the water; perfect weather for it, got some fish, stayed in the yak and didn't puke. What more can you ask for really?
